


Simon Doesn't Believe In Ghosts

by SkadiofWinter



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Ghost Sex, M/M, Post-Season/Series 02 AU, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-05 03:17:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15855129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkadiofWinter/pseuds/SkadiofWinter
Summary: He doesn't.





	Simon Doesn't Believe In Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sonsofdurin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonsofdurin/gifts).



> Thank you for the inspiring prompts, I hope you enjoy this ghostly little tale.

Simon didn't believe in ghosts. He hadn't believed when he'd been pushing his own dead limbs up through the earth, nor when he thought of his mother sometimes and his throat would go dry as if the air were being sucked from the room.

Not when he'd been a disciple of the prophet's lies telling them another resurrection would come and not now, after everything.

 

 

  
Kieren had been annoyed with him again for letting the kettle go cold. It didn't matter that almost two decades has passed since being pronounced 'alive' again, he simply forgot, tuning out the electronic clicking and water bubbling as he tuned out lots of things.

"Simon, can you get the door?"

He grumbled and got off the couch - a very soft, worn leather number found free on gumtree. They'd carried it three streets by themselves then given each other lazy, sweaty blowjobs as rewards. Apparently he liked marking his scent, according to Kieren.

The bell rung again.

Amy was more persistent than any ghost. Alive and well. Warm as she embraced him briefly, kissing his cheeks and dancing past to squeeze all the air out of her dearest friend. Would still be hugging him by the time he and Phillip made their way through.

Those dinner parties of four had always been the best ones. Normality and protest always over how each thought it their right to do the washing up. Most often it landed with him and Phillip. They'd talk about cars. Never politics, unless they had drunk too much. Find their partners in the studio, Amy wrapped up in a bedsheet like a Grecian Goddess with Kieren ready to be the next Michelangelo, using wine as paint.

It had been normality for them.

  
He pretended it was another night like that. His head was buzzing dimly, there was light coming from down the hall.

Ghosts were the ultimate form of rebellion, refusing to die.

But he didn't believe now either, hearing Kieren's voice again so clearly from the preserved studio, along with the soft tap of paint brushes on a glass.

"Simon, will you join me tonight?"

 

  
He hadn't believed in anything when he'd been stood in the crematorium, watching his husband's body put into a furnace. The box with the ashes was perfectly plain and nondescript yet still managed to be ugly. He found himself searching for urns and the ashes were moved a few days later into a sturdy wooden box. Over the next few months they were scattered in Paris - into the Seine. A quiet street in Rome and spilled into the floorboards of an Irish pub. What remained on his return to Roarton dusted Kieren's first, empty grave. He sat the box on top of it.

Soon the need for space would have more influence over these cursed, unholy stones and the plots would be reused again for fresh dead. For now he could sit and watch the letters of his name blurring into one another. There was no body. Nothing to come back, nor wait for.

 

  
It had been three difficult months, when he woke to the murky blue pre-dawn light, and Kieren astride him.

Simon never forgot the fact of Kieren's death, not even in dreams. He looked like flesh and blood. His hand didn't go through him. Could not touch him at all infact, and gazing down saw him almost floating, millimetres above the bed sheets. He felt him though, the force like wrong sided magnets repelling each other.

Shutting his eyes he swallowed hard. Looked again and almost smiled back. Kieren was smiling, pained in the droopy sad eyed way he was sometimes.

"Hello," Simon whispered.

Kieren opened his mouth but no words formed. There was nothing to try and lipread. The smile returned. The sheets moved and the friction started. His husband ground his hips seductively and he grew mesmerised with the thin air between them. Spent the rest of the night dreaming he was in space, the objects in their home floating around him.

Experimenting with his hands he could almost embrace him. Circle his arms around him, and the pressure. Whatever it did made Kieren's eyes burn hotly and that was enough of a thing to awaken him from his dreaming. It took a few nights, the few nights he would awaken to him, to eliviate his clumsiness and stop the energy sending his lover kareening back too far, or impossibly into the air, unable to grasp anything to stabilise himself.

The next morning he would put a cross on the calendar. There were only four across the past three months, though it had been late in June that first time.

He wondered what Kieren felt. If he was warm, truly physical. Energy existed without being visible. He couldn't ask. There were no shakes of the head nor blink twice for yes and not for want of trying.

The familiar signals were the same. The pinning of his wrists to go faster, scratches when he wanted to be kissed. There could be no such marks now but his husband would almost knead at him in lieu of it.

Kieren frowned on discovering he was no poltergeist. He pressed out the glare in his brow with his fingers. Petted the top of his head like a cat and his hair ruffled as in a breeze. They did not always make love, passing hours lying side by side, or most often Keiren hovering atop him with one ear close to his heart, Simon keeping his arms locked round him though by the end they ached from the exertion. Simon would talk sometimes. Of his day; reminiscing of past memories. He didn't know if the words were getting through, but Kieren was always relaxed as he spoke.

One night he cried, sobbing as he hadn't since the wake. Had been thinking about seeing a physciatrist. Grief manifests itself in different ways, they'd say. He doubted this kind of pleasure was popular amongst mourners. More poets would have written about it. The tracks in his arms were still only the ones of old which ruled out that type of feverish hallucination. When his tears had cleared enough he saw Kieren was there. By magic he was there and he clasped at the sheets around him. Pulled them free and threw them on top so they were cocooned together. Often they had lain like this, panting in the quickly moist air. It had been comforting then and it was now.

I would not have haunted you, he thought. But Kieren was not like this. It wouldn't be his choice either. This rational thinking was only brought about by his closeness and he watched him now, nuzzling the space around him like a kitten. Wrapped his hands over his back and sighed. What was rational? Being crazy due to mourning, a drug addled brain. Having died once already.

The risen, providing no accident happened, had good mortality rates. Old men and women who had been in their nineties on their first death were now alive and well nearing a hundred and twenty and who knew how much further they'd go. There were no reports of hauntings in Roarton. And he wouldn't be making enquiries.

Ghosts probably didn't need clothes. Not if they were seeking bodily comfort and a soft bed when they came. He had been staring at the ceiling, yawning. Thought sleep was coming but the weight falling was not drowsiness and intensified on his chest. He became aware of Kieren again straddled there. Naked, as always. Cock hard, displayed in his palm. He sat up a little more and watched him touch himself. Kieren was being a tease, sitting so close knowing he couldn't suck him off. Not properly.

They tried. It was like playing operation, getting him in his mouth without touching the sides, keeping his tongue from sliding along him. Their arousal simmered down once they were done laughing and they lay facing one another under the sheets. He felt young. Kieren was eternally young now. He tried hard not to think of the dead coming back to life. Miracles didn't happen that often.

"What'll we do, Kier?"

Kieren shrugged and closed his eyes. If he had seventy years left to live this would become maddening. It was already.

"Why aren't you at peace?" he frowned, turning away, and did not see him again for six more months.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Simon, will you join me tonight?"

He had forgotten the true sound of Kieren's voice. There were recordings but they always held some synthetic quality. This time was soft and luring.

He was not ready. Gave no answer. There was no one in there to answer.

The next morning he entered the studio for the first time since it's artists passing. Gathered up all the paintings and sketches to be kept and catalogued. Sorted the tools and paints that could be donated and cleared the rubbish.

He ended the night with multicoloured stains across his arms and cheeks, as had not been uncommon when Kieren had joined him after work without bothering to shower. He had been a canvas then, painted over and over with acute strokes.

He put a cross on the calendar in the morning but had no memory of the latest meeting, only that it had happened and it left a soothing warmth on his heart.

It was a warmth to last for the year ended with no more additions. It was easier to handle than the time before when the guilt of his harsh words had been eating away at him.

Kieren's clothes were boxed and sent out. Amy kept most. Turned shirts into dresses that were danced and travelled in, her friends spirit kept alive with her always. She made Simon pocket squares and scarves then had him wear them to parties and gatherings which led to dates and casual acquaintances. He was not a saint. And in the end he had fun and knew a patient kind of peace.

He had company enough to see him through more calendars, all empty of crosses. Amy kissed him at midnight on the turn of the new century, after kissing the portrait of Phillip she kept in a locket.

 

  
It was noon and cool Spring light was highlighting one corner of the living room. The armchair there was faded into a sickly mint green, white feathers poking out of the thin cushion. Simon moved into it, resting his eyes, and it was then he found out Keiren was warm, warmer than he, either by the sun or of his own making as their lips finally touched again.

 


End file.
